Cristobal Condeâs life has become a great deal busier in the past five months. The chief executive of SunGard, the technology provider, recently enjoyed the dubious pleasure of visiting Houston, Los Angeles and Milwaukee in a single working day.

Conde cut short his family holiday when news of LBO leaked

Granted, he travelled by private jet, but even so, according to Conde, it was anything but glamorous. “The jet does not mean you can rest more,” he said.

Since SunGard’s $11.3bn (€9.1bn) leveraged buy-out by a consortium of private equity firms in late March, Conde has been rushing from meeting to meeting with his company’s seven new owners. All this while carrying on the not insignificant task of running a company that generates annual revenues of $3bn.

The deal represented the largest LBO of a public company since Kohlberg Kravis Roberts bought RJR Nabisco for $25bn in 1989. It was welcomed by a market that predicted it would serve as a green light for similar transactions.

Conde caught a glimpse of what lay ahead while holidaying with his daughters in Cancun earlier this year. The talks with potential private equity backers, led by Silver Lake Partners, had reached an advanced stage. Miraculously, despite the involvement of so many institutions, news had not leaked to the press or the wider market.

Conde had promised to take his daughters swimming with dolphins. His youngest, eight years old, had to be accompanied by an adult. The dutiful father waded in. As he was standing in the pool, he noticed his mobile telephones (no self-respecting chief executive has just one), vibrating furiously on a pool-side table. Word was out and Conde had to cut the holiday short to return to the thick of the action in New York. What followed was a seemingly endless round of meetings with investors and clients alike as they discussed the way ahead.

Conde said among SunGard’s clients the greatest fear was that things might change. But, despite the increased workload, he said all parties agreed on the way to tackle the transaction in the weeks, months and years after it completed. With seven private equity backers having differing areas of expertise, analysts doubted whether any decisions would ever be taken easily at SunGard again.

Conde said it was a question of organisation rather than dispute resolution. “The increased workload is essentially broken up. We have established a number of separate committees, with two or three of the firms sitting on each, depending on their particular strong points. Goldman Sachs, for example, sits on the compensation committee.”

Net profits for the first quarter to March 31 edged up 5% to $90m, as higher expenses offset most of a 13% climb in sales for the same period. Revenues from financial services, the company’s largest unit, dropped slightly as a result of the float of SunGard’s Brut electronic broking unit on the Nasdaq stock market.

Conde said even if results had been less positive, the private equity backers would not have panicked. “They have far more tolerance for lumpiness in results. They are in it for the long term.”

Shareholders certainly do not seem to have been fazed by the cost of employing Conde and his team. In its latest quarterly report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, the US regulator, SunGard said it expected to record a pre-tax non-cash charge for stock-based compensation of about $59m in the third quarter of this year. It said the compensation charge was a result of the acceleration of options in connection with the acquisition of the company.

Part of the reason behind Conde’s frantic travelling following the deal was the firm’s bond roadshow, which often involved flying long distances to see just one firm. With hindsight, said Conde, the travel was worth it, as last month SunGard sold $3bn of junk bonds to help fund the takeover. The issue was part of an $8bn debt package, which also included a $1bn revolving credit facility and $4bn in term loans.

Demand was such that the amount involved in the sale was increased twice. Originally planned as a $1.25bn offering, SunGard initially increased the deal to $2bn of fixed and floating-rate eight-year notes and then added $1bn of 10-year fixed-rate notes.

SunGard suffered perhaps its biggest post buy-out test following the recent terrorist attacks in London. The company, the world’s largest disaster recovery provider, coped well with requests from clients following the bombings.

And late last month, the remaining potential barrier to the completion of the takeover was cleared when shareholders voted to adopt the formal merger agreement. Joining Silver Lake Partners in the consortium were private equity groups Bain Capital, The Blackstone Group, Goldman Sachs Capital Partners, Kohlberg Kravis Roberts, Providence Equity Partners and Texas Pacific Group.